Contents

Overview

There are many inexpensive PCB services around. Seeed Studio (our preferred) and ITead Studio make two-sided PCBs with the works starting at $1 per 5x5cm PCB. Both use the same prototyping PCB factory in Shenzhen China. Turnaround is fast, shipping starts at $3.

Others like DorkBotBox, BatchPCB, etc. pool up multiple orders and send them to the fab. Laen at DorkBotPBX offers purple PCBs that have been quite popular.

We wanted to write a tutorial on how to get your PCB manufactured using these cheap services from source Eagle files.

Check for airwires

First check if all yore connections are on the board. To do this you'll need the zoom-unrouted script.

Polygon fill isolation

A common error on cheap PCBs is when the ground fill crosses to a trace. If you have filled polygons on your board, be sure to increase the isolation to at-least 12mils(16+ recommended). This is done by right clicking on a polygons edge and going to Properties > Isolate.

Design rule check

Before sending your files to be manufactured you have make sure your design is within the specifications of the PCB service you will be using. To help you with this, the associated PCB service provides Design Rule Check files for Eagle. Grab a design rule file from your prefered PCB maker:

Go to Tools > DRC... A DRC window will open from which you can load the manufacturers .dru file you previously downloaded. From this window you can also make adjustment to the various design specifications like minimum trace width (Sizes > Minimum Width), and trace clearance (Clearance). It is usually a good idea to increase these two settings a few mils if your board doesn't require absolute minimum the board house can produce.

Once you've set it up just click (Check).

The DRC will scan your board and log all the errors on your board that go outside the scope of the specifications. By clicking on various log entries the portion of the board where they occur will be zoomed in, and the error in question highlighted. You go through them one by one. Once you've fixed all the errors you simply re-run the DRC again and check if everything is alright.

Generate gerbers

Once you are sure your board is electrically sound, and that it falls within the manufacturing specifications of your PCB service you need to generate files that the manufacturer can use for production. These files are called Gerbers. To generate them PCB manufacturers provide a .CAM file.